Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship: Roger Canals

Wenner-Gren’s newest grant program, the Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ethnographic Film, is named in honor of Paul Fejos, the first director of the Wenner-Gren foundation and a pioneering ethnographic filmmaker. The grant allows an early-career academic to pursue the completion of a work of ethnographic film based on anthropological research already accomplished by the applicant.

We are pleased to present a trailer and abstract for Fejos Fellow Dr. Roger Canals, who received the grant to aid filmmaking on ‘Afro-Venezuelan Rituals in Barcelona: A Comparative Study of Religious Nomadism through Film’.

Trailer A GODDESS IN MOTION – Sub English from Jordi Orobitg Produccions on Vimeo.

Afro-Venezuelan Rituals in Barcelona: A Comparative Study of Religious Nomadism through Film

Fejos Postdoctoral Fellowship

Afro-Venezuelan Rituals in Barcelona: A Comparative Study of Religious Nomadism through Film is an innovative project about the cult of María Lionza which includes an ethnographic film and a website. The cult of María Lionza is a religious practice originating in Venezuela in which spirit possession is frequent. The film A goddess in motion (María Lionza in Barcelona) focuses on the increasing presence of this religious practice in Barcelona, my native city. Through the montage, I explore the transformations that this religion undergoes when it moves to another cultural context. Moreover, the film is conceived as a reflection upon the role of the ethnographer during the fieldwork and it seeks to discuss the difference between “here” and “there”, “sameness” and “otherness”. The objective of the website is two-fold: on the one hand it aims to make available the research that I have conducted on the cult of María Lionza to date and, on the other hand, it is presented as a participatory medium for the exchange of material and knowledge about María Lionza. Thus, it provides believers and artists with the possibility of sending new images of María Lionza and the cult rituals. As such, the website has been designed as a space for ethnographic experimentation.